dbGrafx Booster – Red, Green, Blue, Chroma, Luma – Oh My!

In October last year I had prematurely announced that the dbGrafx Booster was a done deal. Sadly further testing after the announcement revealed several major bugs which rendered that board un-sellable. Furthermore, after a friend of mine asked: “Where’s the S-Video?” I just knew the current dbGrafx Booster design was obsolete.

Last night I assembled and tested two variants of the new design: one CXA1645 based, and one THS7314 based. The major difference between these two video chips is that the CXA1645 can transcode S-Video while the THS7314 is a simple video amplifier. I chose to make compatible with two video chips in case the CXA1645 didn’t pan out since it’s an older chip.

After a few minutes of testing and comparisons, it was clear that the CXA1645 design was superior. Not only is the addition of S-Video a huge bonus for gamers where SCART was not standard, but the quality of the RGB signal was much better in my opinion. I don’t really have the video capture equipment to make a good comparison so I guess you’ll all have to trust me on that. That being said, the dbGrafx Booster will be built and sold with the Sony CXA1645.